


Attrition

by Davechicken



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: AU, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 12:24:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9323447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Davechicken/pseuds/Davechicken
Summary: D'Qar did fall, and although the Resistance escaped, Leia feels the loss keenly.





	

How many times have they run? She’s lost count, over the years. They’ve had to abandon so many bases: first as the Rebellion, and now the Resistance. Worlds with memories, walls with stories, homes with emotions.

You learn to never really assign the word ‘home’ to a place once you lose the first one. _Truly_ lose it. Few people in the galaxy have watched the planet that cradled them explode into nothing, but Leia Organa has.

And now the First Order can destroy five times what her father managed, at once. The whole core of the Republic, gone. D’Qar… also gone. They escaped, just, but running is all they’ve managed.

She wonders how many planets that monster is prepared to blow up to quench out what little hope remains. At some point, either he’ll destroy enough Resistance to make their regrouping last decades, or he’ll decide he needs to keep some worlds to actually rule. She’s sure his ruthlessness will far outweigh her compassion.

It’s a horrifying prospect. The billions of lives he’s prepared to put under his heel, to crush them out…

Leia stares up at the night sky, looking at the stars. Some hold habitable planets and moons, and others are too wild for any life-form to settle or terraform. The distances are barely a blink for their craft, but when you think about how far you actually have to travel to get from one to the other, it doesn’t add up. Your mind just… boggles.

But they’re finite. And every light that goes out, every opportunity… it’s not just the lives that are taken, it’s all the lives they would have touched, or sparked into being. It’s all the stories that are taken from the universe, all the voices and thoughts and love. All the possible futures where those people had lives to lead. 

How many will she sacrifice? How many does she need to?

They blew up D’Qar. They blew up Hosnian Prime, and four other planets. They blew up Alderaan. She’s beginning to wonder if it’s her fault.

She definitely still knows Alderaan was her fault. She wonders what her father - her _real_ father, not the man who shared her blood - would have done. Would Bail have still stood resolute, when faced with the utter annihilation of their people? The Alderaanians who survive are eking out their existence on other worlds, but the loss… the loss still cuts her to the quick.

What would her mother have said? Either mother? Would they have agreed with her, or would they - like the whispering voices of fear - have said enough was enough? Would they have said ‘now we give up’? 

Leia wonders if her stubborn dedication to the cause is actually just her selfish, bullish pride. Trying to reinforce a decision made thirty years ago, in denial of any culpability. After all, if she sued for ‘peace’, she’d have to live with all the dead voices clamouring that she’d sold out. But…

…when did you acknowledge you couldn’t win the fight? When was it one planet too many? There must be a point when the calculations changed, and you became a gambler throwing away good credits ‘just because’. 

If she surrenders… she consents to all the sins done in the First Order’s name. She robs the dead of their choices, renders their ending pointless and wasted.

But she saves… how many?

_No_.

A life lived in fear of tyranny isn’t a life at all. _She_ didn’t press the button that killed those people. Her rebellion, her resistance, it isn’t the murderer. 

It’s the Order.

_Come home, Luke. Please. I can’t do this alone. Please. Please._ She calls out to him, her heart breaking with the enormity of her decision. _Come help me._

How many times will she be forced to ask an ageing Jedi to stop hiding, to do what needs to be done? There is only one Jedi left this time, and she wonders if the galaxy would have preferred her with the saber, instead of the power to end worlds.

By proxy. Only ever by proxy.

She mustn’t let anyone see how much it hurts, how much she doubts. It’s a pain and a responsibility no one else should bear. She straightens her shoulders, and carries on.


End file.
